DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A HOSPITAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Abstract

“The purpose and essence of any Records Management system is the right information in the right place in the right order, at the right time for the right person at the lowest cost.”- (Baje 1998). For this feat to be achieved, an integrated, highly efficient and effective hospital management system is needed. With this in mind, a careful analysis of the existing records management system being utilized by the FUOYE Health Centre was conducted. The findings showed that the system was highly inefficient- especially as far as retrieval of archival patient information was concerned. This analysis established the need for a Hospital Management System (HMS) that would facilitate effective and reliable records management through automated processes and served as the basis for the research leading to the development of such an HMS. The Major objective of the project was to design and develop an HMS that would computerized patient records Management and give direct benefit for the Health Centre in terms of fast information retrieval, enhanced decision-making (patient diagnosis) whilst avoiding any confusion that would jeopardize the quality of patient care. The HMS was designed as a standalone system and implemented using open source solutions that include MS ACCESS as the database, and Java as the programming language. The system was developed using V-model software development approach. An extensive evaluation of the project determined that the project achieved many of its predefined objectives however, the major limitation of the project was the scope covered. From a proper analysis and assessment of the designed system, it can be concluded that the system developed is an efficient, usable and reliable records management system.